Rockbourne

 ( Villages In Hampshire ) 

The village is home to the oldest Cruck framed building in Hampshire. The building which was being used as a barn in the early 90s is part of the manor and dates from the first half of the 1280s.

The name Rockbourne, recorded as Rocheborne in 1086, may derive from Old English "Hrocaburna", Rooks' stream, Rockbourne, Old Hampshire Gazetteer or perhaps Rocky stream. In the earliest records Rockbourne was a royal manor. In the Domesday Book of 1086, Alwy son of Turber held a hide there which Wulfgeat had previously held of King Edward. Domesday Map – Rockbourne Saewin also held half a hide of the gift of King Edward, to which the sheriff in 1086 made an unsuccessful claim as part of the king's farm, but which at a later date reverted to the Crown Estate.

Alwy was succeeded here as in Hale and West Tytherley by the Cardenvilles, and in the 13th century William Cardenville held a free tenement in Rockbourne. Before 1156 the manor had been granted to Baron Manser Bisset. He was succeeded before 1177 by a son Henry, and whose widow Iseuld was holding Rockbourne early in the next century. Their eldest son William died c. 1220, and was succeeded by his brother John, who died in 1241. Rockbourne passed to his daughter Ela, and then to her son John who assumed his mother's surname. He died in 1307, leaving a son John, who died unmarried in 1334, leaving the manor to his sister Margaret, at that time the wife of Robert Martin, on whom the manor was settled in 1338.

Early in 1336 Robert Martin complained that a certain John de Crucheston (Crux Easton) and others had abducted Margaret his wife and taken away his goods. Not waiting for justice, he retaliated by breaking into the house of John de Crucheston and seizing his property. Some years later he took Crucheston prisoner, torturing him "with cords tied round his head and other torments, and extorting £1,150 from his friends for his release." Robert Martin died in 1355, his wife surviving him until 1373, when the manor passed to her eldest son by her first husband, Sir Walter de Romsey. It then passed by inheritance into the Keilway family, it being held by John Keilway on his death in 1547. His son Francis died in 1601–2, and his son Thomas succeeded to Rockbourne, which, already heavily mortgaged to Sir Anthony Ashley, he sold in 1608 to Sir Anthony's son-in-law, Sir John Cooper. Sir John Cooper was succeeded by his eldest son Anthony Ashley Cooper, created Earl of Shaftesbury in 1672, and the manor descended with the Earls of Shaftesbury.

The nearby manor of Rockstead, which Aldwin held before 1066, belonged to Hugh de Port in 1086. Domesday Map – Rockstead Rockstead had passed to Breamore Priory before 1291. It belonged to the priory at the Dissolution and was granted with its other possessions to Henry Courtenay, 1st Marquess of Exeter and Gertrude his wife in November 1536. to the Crown in 1539, it was granted to Anne of Cleves, but in 1548 passed to Thomas Heneage and William Lord Willoughby, who in the following year sold it to William Keilway. After this date it followed the descent of Rockbourne and became merged in that manor, its name only surviving in Rockstead Farm.